This is a blog by a 20-something in the northeast trying to figure out how she and her DH can find their way to true financial freedom.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

June and July Spending Updates

I was very bad about inputting and tracking our spending for the months of June and July. Probably because I wanted to hide from what I knew would be terrible months. But it turns out we managed pretty well.

For June we spent $311 on groceries which caused our 5 month average to be $312. We spent $223 on eating out, averaging $220 also these past five months. We spent $65/gas, because I did not count our trip gas, which brought our monthly average to $102. We spent $16 on fun with our monthly average being $65. So in all our month was a pretty good month considering we had a couple of day trips and a weekend away.

For July, well we did a bit worse on eating out. We spent $306 eating out, bringing out average to $234. We did save a bit on groceries probably because of the eating out spending only $278, bringing our average to $306. We spend $148 on gas, raising our average to $109, however this could be solely due to the rise in the price of gas. As for fun we spent nearly $200, most of which was on the Wii.

I really want to get around $250 for groceries and $250 for eating out a month, down from our highs of $400-500/month each. That's probably our biggest vice. However realize that in July we spent 2 weeks with my FIL staying with us, eating our food and going out to eat a lot. I shopped end of June in preparation for that. And then as soon as he left, our new roomie moved in and has been eating our food. So I think that our grocery/eating out budget of $584/month for food pretty good for 3 adults.

Especially since our roomie eats a lot (about what DH and I eat combined), he bikes all the time and is about 6'3", 190 lbs of muscle. So we could have had a lot of leftovers and not needed to buy so much food. Until he leaves we definitely are eating way more both at home and out. I can't imagine what teenagers do to a food bill.